


After the Fact

by TheSpaceCoyote



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Accidental Bonding, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Drunk Sex, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-25
Updated: 2018-02-25
Packaged: 2019-03-23 15:55:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13791075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSpaceCoyote/pseuds/TheSpaceCoyote
Summary: Jack's not unused to waking up with somebody else in his bed.Waking up to an omega, neck wet withfresh bonding markshowever, is something else entirely.





	After the Fact

**Author's Note:**

> Done for an omegaverse request prompt on Tumblr for accidental bonding! :)

Jack woke up with a headache. As if that wasn’t bad enough, his mouth felt like the entire bar had taken turns spitting right into it. His tongue felt gummy and the insides of his cheek stuck to his lips and the back of his throat tasted like he’d nearly thrown up a couple of times only to force it back down.

In short—he was hungover.

_There’s painkillers in the bathroom_ ** _,_** the helpful little sober voice in his head needled. Jack had spent most of last night trying to drown Sober Jack in a torrent of booze and sex, but the damn bastard had survived to bug him yet another day. Darn it.

Still, painkillers and water were probably a good idea. He could cop to that.

He sat up slowly, eyes clenching shut at the threatening glow from the window overlooking Elpis. He moved to get off the bed, foot tangling in the sheet. Jack grunted, tugging against the bedding, only for a sleepy murmur that didn’t belong to him to drift through the quiet.

Jack stilled, his eyes shooting open even as his temples throbbed at the sudden motion. He jerked his head around and stared at the space besides him, lips parting in surprise

There was someone else in his bed.

Now, this wasn’t exactly what Jack might call a rare occurrence. You didn’t get the title of “Handsome” by  _not_  sleeping with whichever hottie threw their panties your way. And bouts of drinking in Helios’ finest bar more often than not led to sex—usually in the bathroom or even brazenly in an alcove booth, but sometimes Jack fancied his prey enough to take them back to his penthouse and really give them a ride to remember.

Jack peered over the the man’s shoulder. The yellow coverlet had slipped down his arm, though at first he couldn’t tell considering the matching, glossy armor of a Hyperion-brand cybernetic. Oooh.  _Faaaan_ -cy. He hadn’t picked up just some cheap floozy, nah, this kid had some coin.

Well, if he’d been ordering drinks at Silenus, Jack supposed that made sense. There was a pretty exorbitant cover fee—waived for people like Jack, of course—and that was before one put down the cash for drinks and snacks and those fancy dessert waffles that flew down the alpha’s throat once he got drunk enough.

Jack scooted closer, wanting to get a better look at his latest bedmate. He vaguely remembered flirting with a sexy male omega the night before, and the crop of messy auburn hair that sprung up from the Hyperion logo pillow looked pretty familiar. The lumpy curves underneath the comforters looked promising too. Maybe the kid would be up for another round once Jack kicked this headache to the curb.

He leaned further over, wanting to get a better look at the kid’s face when he froze, eyes widening as they fell on the nape of the omega’s neck, where the skin was smeared with dried blood and darkened in the telltale bruising of a bite.

_Oh_ , hell.

Jack tried not to panic, to keep cool even in the face of any alpha’s worst nightmare. Okay. Okay. Maybe he’d bitten hard but not hard  _enough_  to do any permanent damage. Maybe the kid’s bonding gland was totally fine and intact. After all, he didn’t  _really_  feel that different, did he? Did he?

He paused, trying to come down from his worry and think clearly. How did he feel? Well…sick, mostly. Achey. A little sleepy. In need of a gallon or so of coffee.

That didn’t seem like the halcyon bliss one apparently got from bonding, but as he sat there overanalyzing himself he wondered if maybe that was little more than a rose-colored perception that got bandied around to make the whole alpha-omega endgame thing a little more palatable.

Like. Jack had never been interested in bonding. While he was busy spreading his influence throughout the galaxy, the last thing he wanted was to be tied down to some needy bond mate. One-night stands and booty calls were all well and good, but to be inexorably connected to somebody like that? Not really on the menu for now.

Though Drunk Jack had apparently not thought of that. At least not enough to  _stay away_  from a random omega’s frikkin’ neck. That was casual sex 101. Hold the romance. Use a condom. Don’t both with names or numbers unless they did something wild to earn it.

Don’t go anywhere near an omega’s neck.

Jack didn’t want to be around when the kid woke up and figured it all out, but he also couldn’t exactly  _leave_ , considering it was his own bed the omega was cuddling up in. Even if he had been as drunk as Jack had been, with the portraits and pictures hung all around the bedroom it’d be no secret who it belonged to. Still, he considered sneaking off anyway, really not wanting to deal with someone who may have unexpectedly had their bonding cherry broken. Omegas were pretty defensive of that sort of thing and Jack feared for the state of his knot if the kid was one of those vengeful types.

Then again. He furrowed his brows together as he recalled bits and pieces of the night before more clearly. The brazen flirting that had impressed Jack enough to keep him from tossing the kid out his booth at first blush. The neck tattoo and hints of more along his unbuttoned collar that had lured Jack like a painted-on target. The doting, almost slavish look in the omega’s eyes as he’d hung on his every word, even as Jack had grown drunken and more incoherent.

The kid’s behavior had been pretty typical of his most hardcore fans, hell Jack’d probably made his entire life by sleeping with him. Maybe he’d think of the accidental bonding as some kind of blessing and not a serious breech of trust and unspoken biologic conduct.

Of course, there was always the easy way out. Taking the uncertain variable out of the picture. Jack’s eyes roved around to the omega’s throat, watching it bob softly with his breath. So delicate. Skin like silk.

Jack had never strangled someone in such an intimate position before. He’d choked out lovers a couple of times on request in bed, but they always made it out with little more than a couple bruises and a hoarse larynx in the end. This would be straight up murder, of a sleeping, freshly bonded omega, within the confines of the bed where he would continue to sleep after the scene was cleaned and corpse toted away.

Jack was no stranger to underhanded killing. But the thought of strangling the omega as he lay defenseless—despite the temptation of an easy fix to his current pickle—filled him with uncharacteristic upset. His stomach turned and clenched and his chest and neck burned with tingling that made him feel like a punished child. As if something intrinsic was holding him back, firmly telling him  _no_  and fighting each untoward thought regarding the omega’s wellbeing.

Jack let go the idea of strangling. Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t seem to will his body to behave. And the more he considered it, the more he  _didn’t_  want to.

Instead Jack sniffed at the air, beyond the sour burn of old alcohol and suppressed vomit and the detergent the help washed his sheets in and pushed towards the omega’s scent. He leaned over the sleeping man’s body and planted a palm on the other side, nose nearly skimming over his cheek as he inhaled. The omega’s hair fluttered with his breath, feathered by innate scent that drew Jack like the smell of bread just finished baking, letting the alpha know it was ready to be cooled down to a comfortable warmth and eaten.

He breathed, deep and slow, the burning and clenching slowly abating as he scented the omega—his bond mate? Maybe? Jack still wasn’t completely convinced they had  _actually_  bonded.

Jack laid down besides the young man, spooning up against him as his forearm came to rest over the omega’s waist. He could feel him underneath the sheets, and as Jack’s chest pressed up against the omega’s spine he curled inwards like a wilting flower and let out a soft sleepy little noise that picked at Jack’s heartstrings. He thought he should get up and grab that glass of water and those painkillers before he hunkered down, but realized his headache was almost completely gone—the throbbing tension behind his eyes relaxed to a sleepy hum that told him to lay down and rest and that everything would be fine when he next woke up.

Jack smiled softly, nosing against the back of the omega’s neck, loving the way the old blood smelled as it dyed that pretty scent a shade more flush. He closed his eyes, letting the newfound sense of safety and sweetness take him into its soothing embrace.

Whichever Jack this was—sober Jack, hungover Jack,  _bonded_  Jack—he had the right idea.


End file.
